Celebrity is like an amalgam of old Woody Allen
material,
which has
always given him an opening to concentrate on being
witty and ignoring
such filmmaking details as editing and plot. He seems
to work well in
chaos
and in hyper-boles. This fluff film (no pretense at
Ingmar Bergman
depths
here) could have been funny but isn't, except in
spots. As far as being
insightful about the "horses arses" who are into being
celebrities
without
any other accomplishments to their credit, there's not
really too much
to be said about celebrities that could be profound.
Woody makes a
stronger
statement in the film's subplot that deals with love
than he does about
celebrities, as he believes that meeting the right
mate is mostly a
matter
of luck.

Kenneth Branagh in no way, shape, or form, reminds
me of
Woody Allen,
but he plays Woody. He's just not Woody, all he's got
down pat are
Woody's
voice inflections and neurotic gestures. He plays a
celebrity
journalist
working on a novel and on a film script, roaming the
environs of NYC's
Tribeca, Elaine's restaurant, and various Upper East
Side places of
high
fashion. He is a loser who keeps making bad decisions
about his
personal
and career life.

Branagh is shown via flashbacks divorcing his
nervous
Catholic teacher
wife (Judy Davis), without explaining why, as he
stutters out his
inarticulate
response. Branagh is a phony, using women only to get
ahead in his
career.
We first see this as he conducts an interview
profiling the life of a
famous
actress (Melanie Griffith) in the house she lived in
as a child. He
romances
her in the same bedroom she slept in as a child and
audaciously tries
to
get her interested in his screenplay while he is in
her arms
romantically,
saying he needs a star to be in the film for him to
get his screenplay
backed.

Branagh is going out of his sexual mind when he
meets the
supermodel
Charlize Theron, who shows him how she has orgasms
when touched on any
part of her body. She uninhibitedly dances with NBA
basketball player
Anthony
Mason, and gives him her number in front of him. If
Woody played that
scene
it most probably would have been funny, but with
Branagh it seemed
pathetically
flat and unfunny.

The only scene in the film that had a bit of spice
that
lasted for
more than 15 seconds was the Leonardo DiCaprio bit,
where he's a famous
bad-boy actor who Branagh tries to pitch his
screenplay to in a hotel
room
as he is beating up his girlfriend (Gretchen Mol) and
trashing the
room.
All the while Branagh continues pushing his screenplay
on him. They end
up going to see a fight in Atlantic City, with him
borrowing $6,000
from
Leonardo and losing that same money at the casino
craps table, then
going
back to the hotel to party while high on some cocaine
as Branagh
participates
in an orgy with a groupie who tells him she writes
like Chekhov while
all
the time pitching unsuccessfully for his screenplay.

Branagh steals Famke Janssen away from another and
has the
editor
move in with him, as she helps him with his
screenplay. But he meets
again
the very attractive and ambitious waitress/actress
Winona Ryder whom he
was supposed to date in an earlier scene, and dumps
Famke on the day
she
alters her entire life to move in with him. Meanwhile
his ex-wife finds
Mr. Perfect, a television producer, Joe Mantegna; she
marries him, gets
to be a popular TV host of a celebrity interview show,
and has one
hilarious
scene where she goes privately to see a hooker (Bebe)
guest on the
celebrity
TV show to learn the art of giving good head. The
hooker asks her,
"What
she thinks about when she is giving a blow job?" and,
she responds,
"The
Crucifixion." A banana is used as a prop for the
sexual demonstration
in
self-improvement until the expert chokes on it, and
the demonstration
comes
to a halt.

Another funny bit took place in the green room of
Famke's
TV show
as a Klansman, an ACLU attorney, some skinheads, a
rabbi and a Mafia
don
discuss who is representing them from the William
Morris Agency, but
the
rabbi's biggest concern is if there are any bagels
left.

The film was reel-to-reel with celebrities, as they
made
their cameo
and disappeared. Donald Trump is buying St. Patrick's
Cathedral and
tearing-it-down
for a skyscraper. A producer says he is re-making
Birth of a Nation
with
an all-black cast. Famous for being in a coma, Klaus
Von Bulow's wife
is
wheeled in to appear on the celebrity TV show.
Celebrities give trite
comments
to banal questions such as, "What do you think of the
rain?" Answer.
"It's
really something!"

The beautifully shot b/w film ends as it begins, as
a plane
passes
overhead with the skywriting word "HELP!"
Unfortunately this was, for
the
most part, a lifeless and flat film. None of the main
characters were
cast
right, especially, Branagh. There's no way, no matter
how exact his
mimicry
of Woody is, that he can be thought of as a nebbish
NYC Jew. What was
needed
was some originality and some energy into making the
characters appear
absurdly funny and not carbon copy imitations of how
celebrities are.
Too
few of the jokes worked.